Book jot from April 2021:

I just finished reading The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper. It’s one of his Leatherstocking Tales, and second in the internal chronology of the series, although it can be read as a stand-alone novel.

A tale of adventure and action, it seems like a sort of precursor to much of romantic modern fiction, including fantasy and some kinds of science fiction.

Cooper has a peculiar prose style, even for the time. Somehow, I like it. And he does a great job putting you in the setting—the woods, riverbanks, and shorelines of North American wilderness.  The reader doesn’t really get inside of the characters very much, although I felt closer to the protagonists than I did in The Deerslayer, the book that precedes it. The ending is quite dramatic, and the reader is left with a sense of the profound value of friendship and loyalty.

“We are not about to start on a squirrel hunt, or to drive a deer into the Horicon, but to outlie for days and nights, and to stretch across a wilderness where the feet of men seldom go, and where no bookish knowledge would carry you through, harmless.”